Like an unkillable zombie, or Freddy Kruger returning for the umpteenth time, the matter of reparations for slavery shambles out of its’ crypt on a periodic basis. The whole concept has, I surmise, a catnip-like appeal for a certain kind of politician or intellectual, when catering to the never-to-be-satiated ‘gimme that!’ crowd. “Reparations for slavery!!!!!!!!Eleventy!” gets slapped down by practical considerations about as often as Freddy Kruger … and yet, it staggers out one more time. Never mind that current estimations are that maybe only 5 % of the current American population owned slaves pre-Civil War (and not all of that 5% were white, either). Never mind that a good chunk of the then-American population bitterly opposed the institution of chattel slavery of Africans, never mind that we fought a mind-bogglingly bloody war to end it. Never mind that that any surviving pre-1865 slave or slave-holder would have to be well over a century and a half old. Never mind the sheer obscenity of demanding that rich, successful, privileged PoC’s like Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, and Barack Obama deserve a check for ancestral pain and suffering from working class and poor whites (whose’ families may not even have arrived in the US until well after 1865).
In response to this demand, I put forth a modest counter-proposal, acknowledging that yes, IF there should be reparations paid in this day for the institution of chattel slavery, for the malignant practices of the Jim Crow laws, and local law-enforced racial segregation, and the depredations of the KKK, which cruelly impacted Black Americans, such reparations ought to and should be paid by the Democrat Party.
Humor
“Zuckerberg Buys Alcatraz Island to House Violators of New Facebook Hate Speech Policy”
IMAO:
“Facebook opposes hate speech,” said Zuckerberg. “Also hate agents, hate statements, hate signals, hate ideologies, hate entities, hate symbols, hate slogans, hate paraphernalia, and neutral statements about the aforementioned hate items. However, until now, all we’ve been able to do is deplatform violators. But then they just go to Gab and go right on hate-speeching, because the stupid government won’t let us control everyone’s speech even though it’d be best for everyone.”
“Then I thought, well, they sure couldn’t do what they wanted if they were in prison. Epiphany! I’ll just buy a prison and put all the people I don’t like in it.”
As a famous blogger says, It’s parody but is it really? Worth reading.
Of Humor and Sanity
Back in September, I mentioned some articles describing efforts to give artificial intelligence systems something resembling a simulated sense of humor. “Interesting research, perhaps,” I wrote at the time, “but at this juncture I’m less concerned above providing a sense of humor for AI systems than maintaining a sense of humor for human beings.”
Comes now Claire Lehmann, tweeting: “In clinical psychology you learn that the loss of a sense of humour can indicate deterioration in mental health.” I’d assert that this is probably also true of entire organizations and entire societies.
While people in general are increasingly too afraid to engage in real, lighthearted humor, there is a kind of faux-humor that is toxically thriving.
In The Screwtape Letters, C S Lewis’s devil responds to a letter from his protege, in which the latter refers to his “patients” as “great laughers,” which the younger devil sees as a good sign for his project to lead them into damnation. Maybe yes, maybe no, replies Screwtape; it depends on what kind of humor the patients are engaging in. He goes through a categorization of types, and says:
But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.
Flippancy is closely related to sarcasm and snark. Field Marshal Lord Wavell had some thoughts:
Explosions of temper do not necessarily ruin a general’s reputation or influence with his troops; it is almost expected of them (“the privileged irascibility of senior officers,” someone has written), and it is not always resented, sometimes even admired, except by those immediately concerned. But sarcasm is always resented and seldom forgiven. (emphasis added) In the Peninsula the bitter sarcastic tongue of Craufurd, the brilliant but erratic leader of the Light Division, was much more wounding and feared than the more violent outbursts of Picton, a rough, hot-tempered man.
A few pages later (in his little book The Art of Generalship), Wavell again addresses the topic of sarcasm:
He (the general) should never indulge in sarcasm, which is being clever at someone else’s expense, and always offends.
At the same time humor is being suppressed among people in general, late-night comedians and other media types are heavily engaging in sarcasm/snark, with socially-toxic results that would have been no surprise to Lord Wavell.
Also, some thoughts on the damage done by snideness in advertising.
Rep. Ocasio Luxury Yacht
But we should not treat their instrument, sent forth to try to break our system, as some kind of serious intellectual, or even, as I’ve heard Representative Full Stop called, “energetic and full of potential” or some other idiocy.
We did that with Obama, a man who couldn’t string two words together without a teleprompter, and what did it get us? Nothing. It got the establishment confirmed in their idea that he was “very smart” and “a deep thinker.”
Most of the “intellectual establishment” and the artificers of public discourse are not themselves smart at any level. What they are in fact is good at reading social capital.
[. . .]
Do you like losing the culture? Are you committed to handing future generations to the left by default? Are you absolutely sure the best possible thing would be for the narrative of the left to become universal?
No? Then start making fun of them. Every chance you get, you push their nose in. You make them so ridiculous that even the left is ashamed to count these total idiots in their number.
And frankly, there are few more idiotic than Representative Full Stop.
Well stated and worth reading in full.
The Whites of Their Eyes
It seems that Ruling Class lackey and unfunny comedian Bill Maher has unburdened himself of a particularly snide monologue this week just past, outlining what he sees as the difference between the residents of blue and red states to the denigration of the red states, of course. This monologue was delivered to applause and laughter at every line especially the one about the Blues (AKA Our Kind, Darling!) having Wolfgang Puck and those lamentable, deplorable Reds only having Chef Boyardee, har, har, har! (We have Paula Deen, the Pioneer Woman, and Guy Fieri … and anyway, isn’t Wolfgang Puck so 80ies? He was a laugh line in Northern Exposure sub-plot involving Adam the anti-social master chef for pete’s sake.) There was also another laugh line, about how we all in flyover country were living in a state of frustrated envy, because the Blues are the British Royal Family, and the Red Staters are Meghan Markle’s dad.